In celebration of the gloriously sunny weather we are enjoying here in middle England, I offer you a little collection of pretty watercolour images scanned from On The Sands, a Green Beacon 1957 early reader (they always have the best images don't they?) that once belonged to my very own Mum. Oh for the bliss that would be sitting under an elegant parasol while my little scamp frolicked in the sea... Have a truly gorgeous weekend Housekeepers.

* Frame your favorite love letters and hang them above your bed or display on a tiny easel on your dressing table..

* Fold tiny strips of vintage ephemera (wallpaper, pages from old books, origami paper,etc) around the tops of cocktail sticks and stash them in a little egg-cup or two ready for flagging summer food at garden BBQ's and country picnics.

* Cover a shoe-box in pretty vintage fabric and label it receipts while simultaneously resolving never to lose an important receipt again. Essential if you are a serial taker-backer...

* Choose a vintage recipe card box and fill it with cards documenting special events, outings, parties and holidays in your families life. Note dates, places, addresses, people, menu's and tiny little photos of each event for something that will eventually become a treasured record of some of the teeny tiny details we all too often forget.

* Gift each child in the house a potted plant of their choice for their bedroom and teach them the gentle art of nurture and responsibility...

* Arrange a little collection of teaspoons in a vintage milk jug.

* Stitch tea-dipped doillies on to white bathroom towels aka Sweet Paul...

* Stretch vertical lengths of pretty ribbon across a fabric covered canvas and use teeny tiny pegs (curtain pegs are often decorative and look a little bit fabulous!) to display little notes of decorative inspiration, words of wisdom or essential reminders. Perfect in the kitchen if you use a vintage tea-towel to cover the canvas...

* Transform a pretty table runner into a dress for your little girls favorite doll.

* Add pretty french inspired labels to the edges of your linen closet. Never again will you mistake a fitted sheet for a flat one.

* Use straw shopping baskets in the base of your wardrobe to store scarves, pashminas, shawls, belts, gloves, hats and winter jumpers.

* Use long tall pasta jars to keep knitting needles away from little hands all to willing to use them as Star Wars light sabers. Display with glass jars full of leftover yarn for impromptu knitting projects and gorgeous displays of texture and colour...

* Start a little book of favorite quotes and keep it in your reading basket (Remember? Spectacles, notebook, bookplates, pens, cosy blanket, secret little bar of special chocolate, file for magazine tear sheets, books pending your attention, etc..)

* Spend a day transfering your music collection online and sell old Cd's on MusicMagpie.co.uk or thecdexchange.com

* Find an old photograph of you and your Grandmother and add it to your Comfort Drawer. No-one and nothing offers comfort like a Nana can. don't forget to press a little kiss upon her nose.

* Start a secret stash of "things to do" to help you survive the forthcoming school holidays. Seek out the books of your childhood to be read aloud under the shade of a tree, print out craft ideas from the oodles available on the internet. Gather tissue paper for paper flowers to be strung along the washing line, collect drawing books, new pencils, recipes for kids, a trophy for the winner of whatever, stitch beanbags and cut out fabric dollies ready to be sewn together, add balls and garden croquet, and a small collection of never seen before DVD's for the disaster that is Summer holiday rainy days...

* Attach a single framed picture to each door in the house. I have often thought doors are much under used as little galleries. If you use the same frames on each door, it's content, even if it varies wildly, will add a little whimsy to a long corridor...

* Amass a collection of vintage linen in the crisp colours of Summer ready and available to wrap Summer birthday gifts...

Oh I like this woman! Is she on American television regularly? There are lot's more of her video shorts on her site, which is itself a virtual bundle of both decorative and personal inspiration. Hop on over and go help yourself to an extra-ordinary life...

I have been a bad Mummy. I have made a show of my son. I have scarred him for life and he now considers me to be a "BumBum-Head" and does not intend to be my friend until "Twenty Million and Ten". Yesterday Finley (he of the eloquent insults) had a friend around for tea. I obeyed his strict instructions not to feed George anything that couldn't be served with tomato ketchup, baked cakes, tidied his room, hid his Mummy Bear, and presented myself in a suitably inoffensive Mumsy fashion. Two angelic little boys skipped home from school, and all was well with the world. Feeling a little bit pleased with myself, I scurried around the kitchen arranging a football themed tray of treats and juice, complete with bright red fairycakes in honour of Liverpool F.C. And in I swooped and presented them with a flourish for which I was rewarded with complete and utter, apparently appalled, silence. George it seemed, supported Everton (the blues!) and not a worse insult could I have set upon his head-which didn't stop him eating three little cakes, but which sent me plummeting downwards in my son's estimation to the degree that he was almost hissing in mortified, whispery apology as he dragged his cherry munching friend up the stairs to his bed-room... And there for all to see, was the second horror of the day. Many moons ago, I took it into my mad head to buy my poorly little boy a Ben 10 duvet. Those of you who know me, will know that bringing something so green and ugly into my home was the kind of sacrifice I would only make for the curly haired little love of my life. But on and on he went, so buy it I did, dressed his bed with it and delivered one sleepy little babba up the stairs to the kind of cartoon heaven that all too quickly turned into a nightmare when he looked at me like I had finally lost my marbles and demanded the immediate reinstatement of his favorite dancing duvet, and informed me that on pain of death would I ever, ever put that scary Ben 10 duvet back on. So I didn't. I sent it to duvet heaven and considered that the end of the matter. Until yesterday. When the thunder of a plaster casted leg came banging down the stairs and insults were hurled left, right and centre, the thread of which seemed to be that this was the day I should have read his mind and made the bed with the dratted Ben 10 duvet while George was visiting, before stripping it off again in time for bed. Ooops. Still it could have been worse. Imagine if there had been a doll in his bedroom! Hell's bell's there was. And this doll, once mine, and now occupying a place on Finley's precious things shelf (Uncle Simons football trophy, lavender bag he likes when he's snuffly, robot made of cardboard boxes, globe that was his first ever vintage buy etc...) is much adored by him, so in my race to win the bestest Mommy competition I failed to notice the doll, concentrated on baking naughty cakes and in the process hammered the final nail in my coffin. While gorgeous little George built the finest lego tower I have ever seen he informed me that he had eaten baked beans "once before", (but would prefer them served with a side order of pasta if you don't mind) and told me that his Mummy made great cakes called "cake mix", my little boy wandered around with tears welling in his eyes, living in fear of George revealing to all and sundry and more pertinently the bigger boys in year six, that Finley is the kind of baby girl who plays with dolls... I have fallen off my pedestal haven't I? I am a BumBum head. And my little boy is growing up.

How It Will Happen, When

There you are, exhausted from another night of crying, curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry anymore. And there they are: his socks, his shirt, your underwear, and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be different: the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows shining, sun coming in easily now, skimming across the thin glaze of wax on the wood floor. You’ll be peeling an orange or watching a bird leap from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how, for instance, her body is trapped in the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly into the ruff at her wings, and then doing it: flying. You’ll be reading, and for a moment you’ll see a word you don’t recognize, a simple words like cup or gate or wisp and you’ll ponder like a child discovering language. Cup, you’ll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that’s when you’ll say it, for the first time, out loud: He’s dead. He’s not coming back, and it will be the first time you believe it.

Dorianne Laux

Heavens if there could be something more utterly scrumptious than blogging, it has to be reading about blogging: all the loveliness without any of the hard work! Which is why I can't wait for the sweet thud of an Amazon delivery in early August, because Tara Frey is some kind of wonderful and the bloggers she has featured in her book on creative journalling are some of the stars shining brightest amongst us... Read more about Blogging For Bliss here.

These utterly happy little Matryoshkas from Ravenhill have got to be quite the loveliest celebration of MommyHood (and attachment parenting!), I have ever seen. Created by Emily at Ravenhill and sold on Etsy, I have hatched a teeny tiny little plan to treat myself to one of the little sleepy one's the day I finally get the Vintage Housekeepers Planner online... I do hope Emily is still making them in 2015!

Though it may seem as though I am permanently busy having nervous breakdowns and screaming fits at unsuspecting medical professionals, behind the scenes I am quietly beavering away creating little bits of loveliness (or in this case 550 little bits of loveliness!) for you to download and include in your planner, so the possibility of a puttery treat is only ever the flick of a page away...

Though I can hardly believe it, in the course of four years writing at BrocanteHome I have created more than 550 puttery treats: simple, tiny little tasks you can pick and choose from to add a little vintage housekeeping scrumptiousness to your day...

Designed to co-ordinate prettily with the new Housekeepers Planner I am uploading next week, this download includes 40 pages of treats divided into seasons and homemaking tasks with the following titles...

Puttery Treats for Scrumptious HomeMaking
Puttery Treats for Glorious Spring Days
Puttery Treats for Summer Days
Puttery Treats for Autumn Days
Puttery Treats for a Spooky Halloween
Puttery Treats for a Truly Scrumptious Christmas
Puttery Treats for a Snuggly Winter
Puttery Treats for Ringing the Changes
Puttery Treats for Sniffly Days
Puttery Treats for Baking Day
Puttery Treats for Laundry Day
Puttery Treats for Shopping Day
Puttery Treats for Children's Rooms.
Puttery Treats for Vintage Treasure.

So many gorgeous little treats you can use to brighten even the blah-est of days!

And the cost of all this loveliness? Just £3.50 (approx $5.30)...

Have a scrumptious, puttery, lovely day won't you Housekeepers?

I am soooooo excited about this film! I loved the book (though surely I can't be the only woman on the planet to go yeuuuuuuuuwch about the manky sink and the cat living in the roof??), and I'm utterly thrilled by the idea of Meryl Streep playing Julia Child... I mean really: imagine having your blog turned into a film and then hearing Meryl Streep had agreed to play alongside the imaginary you! You'd blow a gasket wouldn't you??

1) I tidy out my handbag or if things are really bad, I buy a whole new bag. 2) I print out a new housekeeping planner, re-invent my daily routines, and do away with doodled upon planner pages. 3) I start popping vitamins like they are jellybeans. 4) I buy a self-help book. Or twenty three self help books. Yes indeed. I went into organization overdrive. I completed my crisis survival tasks and carried on. And on. And on. I searched the entire universe for an online application that would streamline my pantry stock/grocery shopping/recipe books and found myself irrationally thrilled with Plan To Eat, currently in Beta, but available by invitation to those who ask nicely (and it's worth asking for!)... I downloaded a handy family calendar application Mark can access online so I don't feel like spitting every time he forgets an appointment, or school holiday. And I finally happened across an online budget planner that doesn't blind me with financial science, so I can see just how much money I fritter away on "bargains"... I read books. Sitting in the hospital waiting room and standing up at the train station. I read "Men, Money and Chocolate" (bizarrely revelatory!) and took my laptop to bed one night and read "How To Feed Your Whole Family A Balanced Diet With Very Little Money And Hardly Anytime" from start to finish. Online. In it's entirety. For Free (And no, I don't know why either... but there is a whole site of free books!). I used MySupermarket and saved a silly amount of money shopping online and got cash back on that online shopping expedition and the renewal of my car insurance with OnePoll Cashback. I prowled around the Old Style Thrift Forum on MoneySavingExpert (Who knew that you could abandon dish washing tablets altogether and replace them with a spoonful of laundry powder and a glug of white vinegar?? Try it...it works!)... And I made smoothies, reduced my carbs, remembered to take my evening primrose and magnesium and knew in my heart of hearts that though all of this is simply a case of Whatever Get's You Through the Night, making Shut Up and Get On With It my new mantra means that when life calms down and I no longer feel the urge to run it with a rod of iron, some remnants of these glorious new habits will remain and my friends and family will be neither deaf nor heartsore from listening to me and my ongoing chorus of the badly done to's... And that by the time I'm 83 I will be the most organised woman you have ever met.

Slice a lemon in half and leave it sitting onthe draining board before you go away for a day or two. You will return to a scrumptiously fresh  kitchen...


The torn pages of a book can be repaired by smearing the tear lightly  with the white of an egg and leaving it to dry...


Clean dis-coloured gilt by rubbing it with a cloth soaked in water in which two onions have been boiled until tender.


Polishing tiles with a mixture of full milk and water will keep the glaze glossy.


Clean diamonds with gin.


Sprinkling talcum powder on the floor where ants are prone to run will deter the bothersome little mites.


Fill the base of your household bins with salt to counteract bad smells in warm weather.


Line the base of doormats with newspaper to catch the dirt.


Fold sheets and tablecloths in a different way everytime you launder them, to prevent wear and tear along folds.


Old tarnished oil paintings can be cleaned with a onion sliced in half.  Rub the cut surface in small circular motions over the painting, slicing the onion as it absorbs the dirt.


Water a sad looking potted plant with cold tea for a day or two. The minerals will give it a boost.


Tie bundles of chalk together with ribbon and hang from your wardrobe rails to absorb musty odours.

Cantilever shoes that I have very definitely seen on the catwalk recently, a swishy dress, men carrying phones and radios on their person... how fabulous that so many of these predictions were absolutely spot on! Now to go find me a electric headlight with which to spot an honest man.